YANGTZE RIVER

Arriving in Yichang, we boarded our boat and spent the night moored here. This was my first experience with any kind of cruise so I didn't know what to expect. The boat seemed sort of old and certainly not luxury but comfortable. Our rooms were a reasonable size with a little "deck" that you could stand on. As you can see from the photos, most of the outer wall of the room was window. That meant you could even lay in your bed and watch the scenery go by! The food was all prepared on board and was quite good. Breakfast and lunch were always buffet style with dinner being a regular Chinese family style meal. There was a gift shop, small hair salon, acupuncturist, Chinese doctor, coffee shop, bar, masseuse, and several artists on board. There were guides who provided narration about the scenery as we passed by.

BOAT PHOTOS HERE

Yichang is just downstream of the Three Gorges Dam. The dam is in the first of the three gorges, Xiling. The other two gorges are Wu gorge and Qutang gorge. We left the dock early the following morning and stopped for a visit to the dam site. This dam is the largest hydroelectric project and dam in the world. Besides power generation the other purpose of the dam is to control flooding downstream. The dam was completed in 2006 and the area upstream of the dam has been filling ever since. Since we started downstream of the dam we had to go through the locks to continue our journey. The locks are comprised of five levels and it took us about three and a half hours to get through the series of steps. We did not use the fifth and highest level. I'm not sure whether that is because the water level behind the dam is not yet at its highest point or whether the fifth level is for flood times when the water is unusually high.

DAM AND LOCK PHOTOS HERE

I think that this river cruise was my favorite part of the entire trip. It was interesting, beautiful and relaxing. I have never been a great fan of Chinese landscape painting but the scenery on this cruise gave me a whole different perspective. I believe I can now begin to understand what the artists see and are painting. As a matter of fact, I bought two small paintings from an artist who was on the boat.

CRUISE PHOTOS HERE

We saw many interesting sites along the way. Terraced farm land and stairs down to the river where it looked as if people were waiting for a boat to stop and pick them up, temples, fishermen, small boats, barges, new bridges, and brand new cities created just for the more than 1.5 million people being displaced by the rising of the river behind the dam. The river has already risen to a depth of about 160 meters behind the dam and it is expected to rise another 15 or 20 meters. Whole cities have been flooded. People who have lived on the land for generations are having to move to cities and find new homes and new work. Many are not happy about it. It's very sad for them and I'm sure the river was even more beautiful before the dam.

FARM PHOTOS HERE

While on the cruise, we had two different excursions to see things along the way. The first was a trip up the Shennong Stream where we boarded little wooden sampans that were rowed, and then pulled, by men of the Tujia minority who live in the area. They have used these sampans for fishing and transportation for hundreds of years. During the dry season much of this stream was too shallow to row so they would get out of the boat, strap a rope (which they make themselves out of bamboo) around their chests and pull the boat through the shallow areas. Now they only do it for tourists. And as the river continues to rise, they will probably have no more need to pull the boats because it will be deep enough to row. Then I don't know what they'll do for work. Perhaps they'll still continue the sampan rides rowing only. Many people in this area depend on the tourists for their livelihood. Another interesting thing about the Tujia people is the custom of their ancestors of placing coffins high above the ground in cliff caves. No one really knows why they used to do that nor how they got them up there! You can see some in the beginning of the photos.

SHENNONG STREAM PHOTOS HERE

The second excursion was to the Ghost City of Feng Du. We did not get to go into the main part of the village where the people live but instead visited an area where there was a Buddhist Temple and a beautiful old pagoda. The bamboo growing in the area is beautiful and was used as a location for the filming of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". But the place is being developed into another tourist attraction. The large white emperor figure in the photograph will actually be a five star hotel when it is completed! And while we saw some interesting things it's hard to say how much of it has any real historical significance and how much is being built and hyped to attract tourists.
In the southern part of China they eat more noodles than rice and there are many noodle soup stands where you obviously choose your ingredients and they put them together with the soup stock from the big pot and create a bowl just for you. As you can see there is a tempting array of various noodles, vegetables, pig snouts, tongues, and shellfish to choose from.

FENG DU PHOTOS HERE